July 18, 2006

Adam the Healer

Reader Jake alerted me to last Thursday’s ABC Primetime Live on Adam the DreamHealer – a 19 year old from Canada who claims special healing powers. I decided to watch it to see what this guy was claiming and how ABC dealt with it. The program wasn’t as bad as it might have been. And one part was so (unintentionally) funny it had me howling with laughter. (More of that near the end.) Ultimately though, it was rather sad.

Adam’s story begins around the age of 15, where he claimed he began to experience telekinetic events such as pencils flying into his hands, although apparently no one but Adam actually witnessed these events. More importantly, it is claimed he cured his Mother of MS. That clearly convinced his family, and his parents now work full time on Adam’s business of lectures, tapes, books etc. (He couldn’t cure his sister’s acne though - “I wasn’t about to waste any energy on a little pimple”. Don’t bother this guy with trivial stuff.) But his fame grew after he cured musician Ronnie Hawkins of “inoperable pancreatic cancer”. He achieved this through a series of long distance treatments (ie he stared at a picture of Hawkins), over eight months, after which, Hawkins’ tumor had gone. Powerful stuff. As further proof we were introduced to a teacher called Linda, who had been suggested to ABC by Adam’s family as a typical success story. Linda had (also) been diagnosed as having “inoperable pancreatic cancer”, and it was claimed her tumors had also “gone”.

The heart of the ABC program was to follow four people who hoped to be healed by Adam. The four were: 14-year-old Lucy, whose knees constantly dislocate to excruciating pain; 22 year old Christina who had a tumor on her lung; Dawn, a champion ballroom dancer with MS; and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who had suffered a horrible blow to the back of his head with an axe, apparently leaving him unable to move or speak. I’ll return to these four at the end.

We were shown Adam in action at one of his seminars. With infra-red cameras, we could see Adam supposedly manipulating the auras or “quantum holograms” as he calls them of the people in the room. His actions were compared to Tom Cruise’s character in Minority Report, who moved images in this way. To me he looked more like a kid pretending to do some kind of Kung Fu or Jujitsu moves he’d seen on TV. I’m not surprised he wanted the lights out – I don’t think I’d want anyone to see me doing anything as daft as that either. Still, Adam claims to be able to see auras, detect what is wrong with a person and manipulate brainwaves with these techniques:

“As a kid, hide ‘n’ seek was not a game that I enjoyed . . .. I just couldn’t figure out the point of the game. Someone might be hiding behind an object such as a tree, but they would still be visible to me. Their aura would show beyond the tree’s outline. It was as ludicrous as a large man trying to hide behind a broomstick,”

(Snip)

“I look at someone’s picture. Exactly what happens, I really don’t know — I think it’s just something I was born with. All of a sudden, I totally disconnect from everything around me in the room, and I see these images of the person in front of me. And then, from there, I can see what’s wrong with the person. When I change around these images in front of me, it influences the person’s health,”

And according to Adam’s own webpage, there have been scientific studies with EEG:

A total of 4 EEG brain maping (sic) studies were recently carried out on 4 different patients. These are all certified scientific methods of measuring brain wave activity. All 4 showed sigificant (sic) brain wave activity once Adam connected as if doing a healing.

I’m sure any one of those three skills would qualify for a certain conjuror’s Million Dollar Prize, but for this program we had to make do with ABC’s John Quiñones. He wasn’t that bad in the job. First, Adam was filmed “visualizing” what was wrong with a couple of people. We saw him diagnosing one woman as having back and shoulder problems. The woman said Adam was “right on the shoulder” problem (she didn’t mention anything wrong with her back),but had missed her lung and breast cancer. Quite a big thing to miss, you’d have thought. Adam had the explanation rationalization ready – what he sees isn’t what the person thinks is most important. Funny, I’d have thought it important that “I can see what’s wrong with the person” would include cancer if it were there, but one out of three counts, apparently. Next, Quiñones was asked to pick someone at random for Adam to diagnose. Quiñones did so, and Adam watched this woman walk from her seat in the room, up the aisle, up the stairs and across the stage – and correctly diagnosed she had problems with her knee. Luckily she didn’t have cancer as well!

Adam attempted to replicate his EEG successes, this time with Quiñones as the subject. Quiñones was fitted up with 19 electrodes to his head, while Adam attempted to change Quiñones’ brainwaves. The result, unlike the successes claimed on Adam’s website, was "inconclusive". (Translation – it didn’t work.) Again, Adam had the explanation – the other people had had something wrong with them that Adam was trying to fix. (Note: that’s not what it says on his website – see my bold in the cite above.) Well, of course. I’m sure it couldn’t possibly have been due to the “independent EEG expert neurologist” hired by ABC, or what appeared to be some kind of blinding (it looked like Quiñones didn’t know when Adam was doing his pretend Jujitsu moves in the next room).

Whatever the reason, it looks like Randi’s million could be safe for a while longer.

No program like this would be complete without the obligatory reference to Quantum Mechanics as an explanation for all the magic woo we have been seeing. Fortunately we were treated to Bob Park telling us “physicists shudder when they hear this”, along with some other gems. I’m sure that wouldn’t have convinced the woos watching, but it was good to hear anyway. Park was pretty good in his two or three brief appearances.

But the truly hilarious piece was the explanation of where Adam got all his scientific knowledge. If you didn’t see the program, I promise you that I did not make up what you are about to read. Asked how Adam is so sure what he does is real, he recounted how, when he was 16 he had a dream telling him to go to an island to meet a large black bird. Apparently this dream impressed his parents so much that the next day they went with him to the island named in the dream. (What understanding parents!) There, on what appeared to be acres of forest or wild land, Adam found (drum roll) – A BIRD. Amazing! What are the odds? It gets better. Adam’s parents were so impressed with this bird they took a picture of it (get this):

“as it locked eyes with Adam and … imparted to him complex scientific information about the universe”.

Note, not just any kind of information – “scientific” information. And not the regular stuff - “complex” scientific information if you please. Who knew a random blackbird would be an expert in Quantum Physics?

Don’t believe it? Don’t have to – here’s the picture they took of the bird to prove it:

(My caption.)

I have to admit, it took me fully a couple of minutes after that before I could stop laughing enough to hear what followed.

The conclusion was less mirthful though. We revisited our four hopefuls. The 14 year old with the terribly painful knee problem had to have emergency surgery to repair the bone that had not healed properly after an earlier surgery. Her final comment, “Adam healing didn’t help the pain at all” was heartbreaking.

The MS sufferer was shown doing a (slow) dance routine, and appeared to be doing well. But MS:

…is cyclical and unpredictable […] Spontaneous recovery from symptoms can occur and last for months or years.

The 22 year old with the tumor on her lung discovered that the “tumors barely grew at all”, which presumably means they had grown a bit. They hadn’t gone anyway, and it wasn’t clear what other medications she was taking that might have helped.

The army vet was the sorriest case. He was clearly much sicker than Adam was used to seeing and I actually felt embarrassed for him as he went through his Kung Fu moves in front of the sad immobile man in the wheelchair. Adam asked if he could feel anything – “most people feel tingling in their head” he suggested helpfully – but there was no response. Adam seemed to blame skeptical people in the room (read “doctors”, “nurses”), for this failure. At the very end of the program we were told the vet had been able to say one word (this was some time later, presumably), and his wife (I presume she was) was convinced Adam had something to do with this. Of course, it is impossible to know what would be the situation if he had never seen Adam, but the likelihood is things would not have been much different.

It gets worse. Remember the teacher we met at the beginning whose cancer had vanished? Well, at the end of the show we learned her cancer was back and the woman had started radiation treatment. And remember Ronnie Hawkins? Well apparently he might never have had cancer in the first place. It was revealed he had had three biopsies but all had been “inconclusive”.

People most likely think Adam’s healing methods work for the same reasons people usually think woo therapies work, namely:

Temporary mood improvements due to the personal nature of the treatment

Psychological investment of the patient in the success of the therapy

Other medicines the patient is taking

The illness just goes away by itself.

We saw most of those in this program.

Of course, if Adam really could see auras, diagnose illness by looking at pictures, alter brainwaves – this could easily be demonstrated in scientific tests. It will be interesting to see if this is ever done by independent testers. I predict now that it never will be, and this is a pity, because if Adam really had the abilities he claims, they should be studied. I also predict he will never apply for Randi’s million dollar challenge, although someone with these skills would ace it. However, do I predict there will be reports of further successes in scientific tests on Adam’s DreamHealer web page. Such results, not independently verified or replicated, will unfortunately be worthless.

I anticipate the objections to my comments. What’s the harm? Perhaps the power of positive thought Adam instills might bring a cure. Well, I’m not convinced that the power of positive thought can make much difference in serious illnesses such as cancer. For example, this summary of 26 studies finds no such link. That said, I accept that there might be some benefit with some illnesses. But you have to set that against the false hope and ultimate disappointment given to people such as 14 year old Lucy. Does their ultimate let down and despair counter any alleged benefits received by others? And what about those, like 22 year old Christina, who decided not to proceed with surgery at least partly based on her faith in Adam? What if she gets worse, but the surgery she refused could have saved her life? And what about the damage done in general to the ability of people to think critically, when they are taught it’s OK to believe in fairy tales? In my opinion, magic therapies such as this do more harm than good, for the above reasons. I recognize this is just an opinion though, and some may disagree. I certainly wouldn’t want to tell the brave and hopeful wife of the Afghan war vet that she believes in fairy tales - let her keep her faith if it gives her some comfort. But I can’t help thinking she will ultimately feel let down.

You left out one vital piece of information and one that makes people like you and me frustrated beyond belief. The 14 year old girl with the knee problems did say she felt that whatever Adam did wasn't working anymore(it seemed to work at first at least to her). But her final comment was that she felt she would get better if she could see him again in person. Now I would like to think it is so she can slap him upside his head but it is because after all her pain she still holds out for a fairy tale ending. Her belief in magic wasn't effected one bit. She represents millions of people around the world who are incapable of letting go of that kind of irrational belief and are sitting ducks for the bastards like Adam.

The Hawk will tell anyone who will listen that the Doctors had sent him home to put his affairs in order because they could do nothing for him. I remember at the time hearing from an accquaintance of his that the doctors had opened him up, saw how bad it was, and simply sewed him back up again. It seems now that wasn't the case.

Fortunately, this program appears to be a lot more well-balanced than that horribly "John of God" one. Maybe they actually read all the letters send in after that.

I just have one little comment to add: Giving people a placebo like faith healing may be better than nothing at all, but it's a definite step backward when they take it over actual medicine. If it's important to give people hope, get real doctors to prescribe placebos when medicine can do nothing. They're the only ones who should be making that judgment.

I thought it was funny how Adam didn't "see" Quinones' injuried shoulder. After all John of God had tried to heal it. But of course Quinones did't do everything exactly like he was told so it didn't work.

My impression of Lucy was she didn't believe in Adam at the end it was her mother who still had faith. Also notice on his website the whole list of qualifiers about his "powers"?

Sometimes, Skeptico, your snarkiness can make you shoot yourself in the foot -- and the only reason this is relevant is that the work you do is so important that I hate to see you weaken, not your arguments, but your ability to convince people by it.

People, sadly, LIKE the erroneous beliefs they have, and hold on to them. They will take any reasonable excuse to dismiss the arguments against them. (This is, in fact, the basis of Rovian politics.) So your offhanded dismissal of Ronnie Hawkins ("never heard of him? Me neither.) gives them one, gives them a chance to stop reading at that point.

First, to anyone with a background in rock, RONNIE HAWKINS AND THE HAWKS is an important name, since it was the group that later became THE BAND, one of the more important bands, at one time back-up band to Bob Dylan, etc. Hawkins played with them -- as is shown in the Wikipedia article -- at the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and at Bill Clinton's Inaugural.

It doesn't mater much that you had "never heard of him." What matters is that you didn't at least do a quick Wiki search for the name, preferring, instead, to add your snarkiness. (You would have also discovered that apparently Adam's 'healing powers' didn't work because he's STILL mentioned as having cancer.) This gives readers who SHOULD be paying attention to your valuable comments a chance to say "Oh, he's so lazy he doesn't even check a simple fact like this. Why should I assume he has checked the other stuff he wrote?"

Again, 'nonsense fighters' are among the most valuable people around. You are a good one. Don't hurt your own credibility like this.

Fair point – I hadn’t considered that throwaway comment about Hawkins might put someone off reading the rest of the post. I have amended the article – it now reads “musician Ronnie Hawkins”, and references to “never heard of him” have been removed. Thanks for your advice.

I seem to recall that Ronnie Hawkins has never had biopsy-proven cancer. He had a mass in the head of his pancreas that was presumed to be cancer (which such masses generally have a high probability of being in someone Hawkins' age), but no definitive biopsy was ever done.

I may have to look into this a bit more to make sure my memory on this matter is correct.

I appreciate your sitting through that segment: I couldn't do it. It is nice to know someone who cares about "factuality" has the intestinal fortitude to do it. Those stories just piss me off. Thanks again, DS

The "quantum hologram" Adam credits isn't his idea, it stemmed from an encounter he had with Edgar Mitchell, one-time Apollo astronaut and founder and chief guru of IONS, the Institute for Noetic Sciences, a small and fading New Age cult group. (I know some of them, and membership, never large, is falling. The average age of members is pretty high, and rising.)

Mitchell seems to have latched onto this "theory" after reading speculative hypothesizing (fantasizing?) about quantum entanglement and its implications from a former scientist called Bohm, who was apparently well respected until he went whack.

It basically all boils down to a happy New Age belief that "everything is connected" and isn't it wonderful, tra-la-la, and distance healing can so too work because quantum mechanics says so.

Last I heard about Ronnie Hawkins, he'd tried everything, including surgery, and apparently every altie treatment he heard about, so if he did have cancer and doesn't any more, it's still dishonest of Adam to claim he did it.

Bill Cameron, one of my favourite TV journalists and anchors, went to Adam when he had cancer (throat, I believe), but Adam couldn't help. RIP Bill.

I've also read (at Quackwatch, I think) that Adam's group sessions require one to sign a disclaimer that basically says: If you get better, Adam did it, if you don't or get worse, it's your fault. Just like an old-time shaman, eh? "She must want the demon to inhabit her! I can do nothing."

At one point the story was that Adam was planning to go to med school, to "learn how he can do these things", but a later version had him deciding to pursue naturopathy, which of course would avoid exposure by real scientists in med school and would also give him a steady supply of suckers. But now that he's making a million a year, perhaps he won't bother.

There's plenty who believe in him, though, like those IONS people I know, even right down to the black bird that downloaded all the knowledge of the universe into his lucky little brain.

Google "quantum hologram" and you'll get endless repetitive hits and references to Edgar Mitchell, which will give you some idea of the actual breadth of this idea in the scientific community (zero). Google "Adam Dreamhealer" and you'll find lots of good stuff debunking him.

Bob Park has apologised for letting ABC use him in the program. He asked readers what penance he should perform, and will now purchase "What the Fuck Do We Know" and watch it the whole way through - twice.

Of course people heal with hope. Do you think you are just your body? Do you think your body gets sick for no reason? Do you really think your life happens to you? When people are healed and then skeptics talk about the fakeness and the placebo it makes me incredibly sad. Your body is your souls expression of who you are and the beliefs you have. You are outraged and upset by people claiming to be healers. Healers only hold the space to allow someone to heal. You have to be ready to heal. You must let go of trauma, stuck emotion and resentments. It is too bad no one has ever told you this. It is too bad you have no faith. This world is a sad one indeed if you feel you have no control over your life or your own body. If anyone wants to know what i am talking about you can write to me and i will tell you. Life is not meant to be a struggle. You only believe it is.
kkadlec007@yahoo.com

There are always reasons. Most involve malfuctions, bacteria, viruses, and that sort of thing.

Do you really think your life happens to you?

Well... yeah.

When people are healed and then skeptics talk about the fakeness and the placebo it makes me incredibly sad.

When people aren't healed, and quacks claim they are, it makes me even sadder.

Your body is your souls expression of who you are and the beliefs you have. You are outraged and upset by people claiming to be healers.

Apparently moral outrage is good for my body, then.

Healers only hold the space to allow someone to heal. You have to be ready to heal. You must let go of trauma, stuck emotion and resentments.

Strange that my emotional state doesn't have all that much to deal with whether I recover. Stress interferes, but I don't get all much of that.

It is too bad no one has ever told you this. It is too bad you have no faith.

It is too bad people who tell me this have no obligation to prove what they say because they have the thing that allows them to completely ignore the truth, no matter what: Faith.

This world is a sad one indeed if you feel you have no control over your life or your own body.

Sad that you have to manufacture this imaginary depression so that you can say whatever you want about skeptics, even though you've obviously never spoken to one.

Life is not meant to be a struggle. You only believe it is.

Life wasn't meant to be anything. Besides, if it wasn't for the existence of struggle, it'd be boring. I sometimes play videogames just to introduce struggle into my otherwise serene life. And, of course, I struggle for the truth, because that's a higher value than my comfort.

Adam wants to remain "unidentified" and "mysterious". However, there MUST be people out there in Vancouver/BC who went to school with the boy or who KNOW of the family? They can't just have "beamed down" from nowhere? Perhaps they can comment on the veracity of his claims??? Any ideas?

Adam wants to remain "unidentified" and "mysterious". However, there MUST be people out there in Vancouver/BC who went to school with the boy or who KNOW of the family? They can't just have "beamed down" from nowhere? Perhaps they can comment on the veracity of his claims??? Any ideas?